


Supper Time

by PAPerryman



Series: Service Robot's Story [6]
Category: Callisto 6 (Web Series)
Genre: Callisto Fics, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 17:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19950379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PAPerryman/pseuds/PAPerryman
Summary: Needing information and parts to help SIR, Wez meets with a Traeger contact of his who's seeking knowledge of his own.A Callisto 6 StoryBased on the setting created by Eric Campbell and Sam de Leve





	Supper Time

Wez was beyond done with waiting. Parked and seated on the cushioned saddle of his powered-down cycle, he’d hooked his custom motoboots - their magnetic anchors active at the toes - under the straight handlebars. He’d leaned back, appreciating the balance from the toe-hold. His abs were taut, hands folded behind his head. Where he’d parked, in the alleyway between two hempcrete office buildings, only the most astute of streetfolk would notice the neon burn reflecting from his AR spex. Just the way his contact liked it.

The meandering duskfolk provided a moving background to the live feed of the Dodgers’ home game displayed over his HUD. In the lower right corner pulsed the text he’d sent earlier. It’s mantis-green helvetica called back to the retro days of the early 21st. Its ellipsis occasionally waved and drew his eye for a reread while the next batter approached the plate.

**_19:24:71 >>> Here. x1 Zhèlǐ..._ **

The Plaza after sunset was the place to find those pleasures that any person wanted. Well, provided that person had plenty of reputation, reliable credit and knew whom out of a couple-hundred connected locals they should ask. As far as the cattled tourists to Los Angeles were concerned this was where the street foods reached above-questionable caliber, the pop-up craft drink carts distributed free tastes to anyone who even remotely appeared over 18 and the litter-free streets lorded over the low-character denizens in the filthy parts of the town like Raft City, Compton Peninsula and those damned holdouts on Baldwin Island.

Alpha’s Corporate District: L.A.’s cleanest toilet, and where Wez couldn’t wait to get off the pot.

The man Wez awaited, known by the town’s underbelly as T-Hunger, was late. Late by ten minutes and it wasn’t by accident. Tardiness offered him an added layer of precaution in the event that any angling interests like corporate security, LAPD officers on the take or contracted agents could have caught wind of a meeting like this one. What Wez hoped to tease out of this corpse was still a crap-shoot. When the consent to meet had hit his screens, Wez chose to roll the bones.

T-Hunger’s name derived from his plentiful appetite. One reputed as having little to do with food. As a Traeger consultant with a sordid past he regularly milked his networking prowess so he could keep his onyx-level Mama Corp credit limitless and his street reputation intact. Wez knew this contact of his was regularly walking along the thin line between proxy and punk. In that, they were more alike than either preferred to admit. Both put their betters at considerable risk while they garnering intellectual properties from disreputable sources. It was the game they played. It came along with the chance for hefty retribution if caught, but the many digits in cash and boost in reputation was hard to dispute. 

Industrial espionage, their expertise. It made them disposable as security risks, and devious like chess grandmasters. Still, if they weren’t family, Wez probably would’ve disowned his uncle years ago on professional principle.

As the sixth inning side was retired, a text response materialized on the left of his HUD.

**_Stay. x4 Wèilái <<< 19:36:01_ **

Moments later, a call alert flashed over his shades. Dees. He took the call on subvocal.

“Hungry?” Dees quipped as her shadowed face flashed onto the display. 

“Starving, got something for me to enjoy?”

Dees taunted him with a small smile, “T and his slinky fuck of a friend just pulled up 10 blocks away on Olives. Got two of his usual bitchunks in the front. Heat sigs show they’re packing the heavy shottys. He and FIzz have their usual pistols in the lumbars. And Slinky’s monowire pinky? Still attached.”

“Maybe one of these days, slink will finally leave that wúyòng whip of his at home.”

“Shit. Fizz’d have a case of detachment worse than he’d had with his mama’s nāināi.”

Wez chuckled. The bike shimmied as he split his legs and smoothly shifted himself upright, landing flat-footed on the pegs. “Thanks. Meet you after sixty for supper.” 

He killed the call then resurrected his cycle.

Pulling out of the alleyway and onto the street edge, Wez ended the game feed and focused on his plan to get what he needed from his uncle without giving up too much in exchange. After a two minute ride he pulled up to a sleek silver four-door vehicle. To call it a car would be like saying a kid’s push scooter is the same thing as a Vector-II P-cycle. The hardpoint mount on the back of the thing was sporting one of Traeger’s finest plasma cannons. Uncle always rode in style, but this was an overt display of heavy weaponry for what they both would consider as a casual meeting between mutuals.

Whatever T-Hunger was expecting from his nephew had raised his hackles and security measures but he was determined to stay cool about it.

Wez dismounted, leaving the cycle running. It’s bright LED headlamp lit up the chrome of the vehicle and reflected off the mirrored sides of the buildings around them. As he approached, confident and posh, he removed a preloaded stick with $5,000 from his jacket and waved it in the air. He stopped sharp as he heard a shrill click from the mini-tank and thought the turret had been activated. Instead the both front doors opened to the sky producing two, fine-suited women built like outfielders. They were wearing reflective shades, assault shotguns and deadpan frowns. 

The tough on the driver’s side moved with soundless steps and clicked open the rear door. It rose slowly into the air allowing the thumping music inside to blare out as if a mobile VIPs-only rave had arrived.

Out stepped the man himself, wearing a suit with more pinstripes than the North Side Nine had ever displayed. The blue sheen on his shoes were polished to the clearest black. His crisp white shirt had a thread for every year of the calendar era. He wore no glasses but replacing his eyes were two, cold gold globes. A prism gloss was glinting off them from the light show from within the vehicle. Everything about his appearance told a story of living to excess. However, his signature trait was T-Hunger’s golden front tooth with a 6K trid-projector mount embedded within its gleaming surface. Wez knew this was constantly updated to reflect the latest in projected entertainment and so that whenever T-Hunger was smiling the party would get displayed in front of him in full and glorious holographic beauty.

The man was a walking display of untouchable affluence, and he sauntered to Wez’s dusty and leather-clad persona like the noble before the pleb.

“Nǐ chīfànle méiyǒu?” the suave operator croaked out through his broad smile. “Wez, my boy, you are a welcomed sight after the events of the past day, and your request to meet is most timely for me.”

“Nice to see you too, Uncle. Can’t say the same for all the fucking hardware your goons are packing.” He put in a firm pause and measured T-Hunger’s response for some sort of a break in his ever-stable presence. Seeing none Wez continued with his introduction, “Fizz in there too, or did you finally dump his slug-ass in Peking to drown in slime?”

From inside the mini-tank came a spewing of Cantonese profanities that would have been intimidating if the shrill voice making them hadn’t been weak-tea feeble. Then, out slinked the poorly-steeped street agent known as Fizz.

In contrast to T-Hunger he was a misshapen man, starving both in form and style. The azure tracksuit with vivid aquamarine stripes that he wore was retro 21st century and very much out of place in the corporate sector; but his pristine sneakers of the latest, exclusive release revealed Fizz’s financial focus. His grey-white skin, thin and moist, clung tightly to every bony definition on his hands and skull. A skull that was crowned with frail, long jet-black hair violently pulled taut into a tail and fixed by a constraining, golden ring that appeared to be embedded into the occiput. This hairdo, more than the insult Wez announced, was the thing constricting his face. It yanked the edges of his bland and gap-toothed snarl from both ends brutally like some unseen force constantly pulled his hair like a muzzle and leash.

If Fizz possessed redeeming qualities, Wez knew none of them and his uncle had never explained his reasons to keep the little turd at his side. Their relationship always seemed to be more boss and employee than owner and domesticated pet.

“You wanna fuck wit mee, chǔn lǘ?!” shouted the turd a whipping motion with his right pinky finger in the air. While Wez knew about the danger posed by the monofilament wire that Fizz kept in there, the gesture would seem to others like the tracksuited ghoul was clearly insane and thought the ‘pink-up position was its own sort of martial art. Underestimating that whip’s potential had created a formidable reputation for Fizz as someone willing to take body parts from those who crossed him or T-Hunger, even if he was easy to rile.

“Quiet, shǎguā. My nephew knows your qualities as much as I do, Fizz.” T-Hunger’s statement of compliment through insult recoiled the slinky man who straightened up and joined his master’s side.

“So, you have business worth my time and attention, Weimin?”

“I do, Uncle. Were you able to get the triaxial servos I requested?”

The operator smirked and raised his arm to snap in a firm, sharp motion. Before the tone had finished echoing off the buildings the bodyguard from the passenger side had already rounded the rear of the mini-tank carrying her shotty and a rectangular box of wine bottle size.

“I did. And, I’m curious, nephew: Why do you want them? Are they a gift for that… girl?”

His phrasing struck Wez with a double-edged stab of sarcasm and cruelty. The platonic relationship he had with Dees was his uncle’s favorite foil to chide him. A reminder that his romantic prospects were diminishing as much as his prospects in joining the family business. 

“Nope. Project of mine. It’s for an alpha test.”

“Sure it is. Sure. Your mother was equally easy to read. These báichī,” he pointed a fat thumb toward the bodyguards, “don’t have that problem. They are monoliths. Powerful and predictable like the ancients’ towers in Singapore.”

“Yeah, sure. Great history lesson. Hey, here’s one for you in return: Past superstitions and supernatural powers and aren’t what the future’s about.”

“You’re wrong. Everyone seeks more power and the knowledge to achieve it, nephew. And speaking of that.” T-Hunger looked over his shoulder at the slug of a man back there.

Fizz pulled up, slow and slug-ike. He was leering with full-moon eyes with the chromed irises of modern enhancement. His voice gurgled, “Whatcha scan ‘bout dose Supers, Wez? Kway-mah? Think they outlive mah litewire?”

“You and your pìyǎn whip, Fizz” Wez chided the urchin. “You go on and on about your thread being wide as the moon and sharp as the stars. Any pinhead with their own monowire would think all you do is wán lǎo èr with yours all day long. Go slink off and make your money from the scrappers’ pickings. This is Big Business between Hunger and me.”

Chided and not hiding his distaste having been so, Lizz showed a wide-gapped, toothless sneer then slinked away leaving the two family members plenty of privacy to speak.

“Fizz isn’t wrong, nephew. Traeger’s sweating hydraulic fluid over these supers,” he puffed out a burst of vapor in a half-cough. “You happen to know who they are? Where they’re from? Anything useful...”

“No clue,” he interrupted. “Just scanned them on K-Sat News like every other Angeleno, uncle. I’ve been working other angles.”

“Well, if you find out anything… I’ll make it worth your while, zhízi.”

Hearing that familiar promise brought a snarl to Wez’s grin, “Like the way you made it worth my while after I finished snatching that cache of holymere screens from the Cassium scrappers? That cost me my bike and three months in recovery, bó fù.”

T-Hunger stretched his arms out wide. His smiling face mocked a kindly sort of dismissal, “C’mon now. You got the best foot and ankle implant Traeger’s ever produced. I picked it special. Just for you, nephew. Plus, you wound up with enough digits in your account to get you more than what you paid for that rocket on wheels you’re presently idling back there.” His face shifted into cold ire, “Show some familial gratitude.”

“I’ll show it, with numbers. Five thousand of them.” With a pitch-perfect flick of his wrist, the card whipped from his hand and toward T-Hunger.

The older man’s arm reacted with inhuman speed and deftly snatched the credit from mid air while the rest of his body didn’t so much as flinch. “Willing to pay double the standard leaves me with a large tip.” Finally his head cocked to the side while his chromed fingers traced the edges of the card. Intrigued he spoke to the young rogue, “This is my hush money, Weimin?”

He didn’t hide his verbal scoff and T-Hunger didn’t ignore it either. “There’s nothing in this town that’ll keep you quiet, Tse-tung. You’ve told your hùnzhàng stories ever since you worked as a boy in the Beijing biomass. I’ve seen you talk so much, no one bothers checking a thesaurus. You’ve got all the words.” 

It was Wez’s turn to posture, arms akimbo and smiling like a jerk. Knowing this was how it was supposed to go. A carefully and traditionally planned out series of personal jibes, physical movements and sound effects all to ensure that both men confirmed they were not only dealing with their de facto partner in crime, but displaying their cultural connection through familial bonds.

No one could mimic it or hope to fake their way into these dealings unless they were these two people. Wez was also tiring of its protracted use.

Wez firmed up, “I’ve paid you, got what I needed and answered your questions, T-Hunger. Better believe I’ll tell you what I fond of about there’s superheroes because I know you’ll pay me.”

“I won’t pay you,”croaked the man. “You can bet though that something  _ will _ be coming your way if you discover anything important.”

With those words he turned back to find the roughs had already held out their shotguns and opened the rear and front doors for reentry.

Fizz walked backwards with the arrogance and slickness of a sidewinder. He touched the tip of his right pinky finger to his tongue. A move that reminded Wez of the dangerous weapon he kept there.

“Ears open, asshole,” he proclaimed as the doors to the mini-tank closed. 

The toughs slid into their front seats silently and loudly fired up the vehicle. Wez watched it pull away smoothly into the night of LA then stepped back to his cycle. “It’s  _ eyes _ open, dispshit,” he muttered to himself along the way.

On the control deck of his bike he punched in a few commands and the display on his spex read out the condition of his vehicle. Most important of all it displayed what he suspected had happened during his meeting. Despite his attempts to record the entire exchange, Traeger white noise generators and anti-espionage video scrambling tech prevented it.

Wez straddled his bike and smiled as he looked up the 20-story building directly beside him and gave a wave to the rooftop. A moment after took to the street a new text message blipped up on the left side of his HUD.

**_A/V captured. Long distance old skool cool. <<< 20:03:23_ **

Dees was more than a friend, but not what his uncle underestimated her to be.


End file.
